Second type of criticality in the brain uncovers rich multiple-neuron dynamics

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1818972116
• Publication Date: 2019-06-12T23:45:14Z
• Authors: David Dahmen; Sonja Grün; Markus Diesmann; Moritz Helias
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; Models, Neurological; Action Potentials; FOS: Physical sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Feedback, Sensory; Animals; Computer Simulation; Wakefulness; Neurons; Analysis of Variance; Motor Cortex; Uncertainty; 500; Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn); Condensed Matter - Disordered Systems and Neural Networks; PNAS Plus; Quantitative Biology - Neurons and Cognition; FOS: Biological sciences; Models, Animal; Macaca; Neurons and Cognition (q-bio.NC); Nerve Net; Software; info:eu-repo/classification/ddc/500

Cortical networks that have been found to operate close a critical point exhibit joint activations of large numbers neurons. However, in motor cortex the awake macaque monkey, we observe very different dynamics: massively parallel recordings 155 single-neuron spiking activities show weak fluctuations on population level. This priori suggests operates noncritical regime, which models, has be suboptimal for computational performance. here, opposite: The dispersion correlations across neurons is signature second regime. regime exhibits rich dynamical repertoire hidden from macroscopic brain signals but essential high performance such concepts as reservoir computing. An analytical link between eigenvalue spectrum dynamics, heterogeneity connectivity, and allows us assess closeness point.